I don't find Michele Bachmann strange-looking in general, to me she just has a look I associate with certain N.-Euro white people--very shallow-set, large, clear bright eyes over strong rounded cheekbones, which can sometimes read to others as a 'perpetually wired' look (HRC, for one, has this too, actually). I agree the cover pic is particularly unflattering and that Newsweek almost certainly chose it for that reason; it's a quick and easy way of conveying, Here is an intensely polarizing person. Cheap tactic, sure, but it's not a highbrow magazine; a big part of their political coverage involves trying to capture personas as opposed to policies and how the public responds to them. Their politician covers often have a caricatured feel and that is inherently trivializing, to both the topic and the person.

You do? I don't, not in those first two pictures. Maybe my eyes are off. Just like Ramona she can't help it if she was born that way. I don't think her "rage" does that to her eyes. Anyway, that's all I have to say about it. I think Newsweek should do a cover all about Mitt's hair.

That's just what it is and I couldn't think of it-40 Year Old Virgin picture! Aha, Jon and I are of one mind and were really meant to be together

It seems that Newsweek’s cover photo of Rep. Michele Bachmann has already proven to be a game-changer: it got Jon Stewart to defend the Republican presidential candidate for an entire segment– not an easy feat. Stewart blasted the magazine for deliberately finding an unflattering photo of the Congresswoman, arguing “you’ve got to go pretty far” to find an unflattering one, listing examples of Bachmann making “yelling into a bullhorn” look attractive, and giving editor Tina Brown a dose of her own medicine.

Stewart began his argument compiling evidence for why he rarely listens to conservatives when they complain that the “liberal” media is out to get them. “Conservatives hate the liberal media so much,” he joked, “they’re willing to accept arguments based on science!” Then he proceeded to do precisely that– attack an allegedly liberal publication for unfairly attacking a conservative. Don’t expect this to happen again anytime soon.

Just putting the photo up elicited laughter from the audience, and Stewart was clear to note the cover’s intention: “that’s a shit picture of Michele Bachmann,” he noted, “and clearly not an accidentally shitty picture.” He went on to argue that of all the things one can say about the Tea Party leader, “one thing you cannot say about Michele Bachmann is that she is not photogenic.” He then showed a variety of Rep. Bachmann photos that could, he joked, pass as “shampoo commercials” and made even the least attractive political activity look good. “You’ve got to go pretty far out of your way to find a crappy photo of Michele Bachmann, and you did,” he quipped.

Stewart then noted Brown’s argument that the photo was illustrative of the Representative’s intensity, which Stewart did not buy one bit. “That’s not an ‘I’m galvanizing the voters in Iowa’ picture,’” arguing instead that the cover looked like “the female version of The 40-Year-Old Virgin.’” “You used that photo in a petty attempt to make Michele Bachmann look crazy,” he scolded, suggesting instead, “that’s what her words are for.” He then put together a far “scarier” portrait of Rep. Bachmann– made entirely of her quotes. “Shame on you, Newsweek, and shame on your editor Tina Brown,” he railed, showing the least flattering photo of Brown he could find.

In 2002, then-state Sen. Bachmann’s campaign posted a “must-read” list of books on her web site. Included in the list were the Declaration of Independence, The Federalist Papers, and a book titled, “Call of Duty: The Sterling Nobility of Robert E. Lee,” authored by J. Steven Wilkins. The Lee biography includes this apologetic passage:

Northerners were often shocked and offended by the familiarity that existed as a matter of course between the whites and blacks of the old South. This was one of the surprising and unintended consequences of slavery. Slavery, as it operated in the pervasively Christian society which was the old South, was not an adversarial relationship founded on racial animosity. In fact, it bred on the whole, not contempt, but, over time, mutual respect. This produced a mutual esteem of the sort that always results when men give themselves to a common cause.

The credit for this startling reality must go to the Christian faith.

Wilkins goes on to claim that slavery existed on a “relationship of trust and esteem,” that positive race relations may have progressed further if the pro-slavery South had won the war, and that Lee, despite being a slave-owner himself, “never held any animosity for blacks.”

After explaining the “cruelty and barbarism” of “pagan” Africa, he goes on:

The fact was (and is) easily demonstrable that, taken as a whole, there is no question that blacks in this country, slavery notwithstanding, were “immeasurably better off” in nearly every way [than they were in Africa].

In Lee’s view, however, emancipation could only be accomplished successfully if it was gradual. Time was needed for the sanctifying effects of Christianity to work on the black race and fit its people for freedom. [...]

Abolitionism was not the best answer.

The idea that the relationships between white slave owners and black slaves were not founded on racial animosity has no basis in history. Whites viewed themselves as inherently superior to blacks, who were bought and sold as property and, for population counts, were worth only three-fifths of a white person. The idea that sanctifying blacks through Christianity made them “immeasurably better off” than they would have been in Africa, meanwhile, ignores the utter loss of humanity caused by enslavement. It ignores the untold number of blacks who died on slave ships, the sale of blacks at auctions as if they were livestock, the families split up at an owner’s whim, and the loss of all basic human rights, not least of which was their own free will.

Bachmann has a history of using slavery analogies, and she has made multiple mistakes regarding American history already in her campaign. None, however, is nearly as disturbing as her love for a book that attempts to explain away the horrors of slavery by rewriting history to make it seem like it was a minor price to pay for the sanctifying favors whites did blacks by bringing them to America as slaves.

“Corporations are people, my friend,” Romney said at one point, failing to silence protestors who continued to challenge him. “Of course they are. Everything corporations earn ultimately goes to people. Where do you think it goes?”

The answer is clearly someone with several screws loose and a poor grasp of reality in any and all forms.

I say this as someone who has developed Tory leanings over the past couple of years, due to the loose screws of the Canadian Left. But when it comes to batshit insanity, nobody can take the cake more than the U.S. Republican Party (the Democratic Party are a notable second place, though ).